Step 7 - Life Keeps on Life-ing w/ Kahi W

In this episode of the 'Pathway to Recovery Podcast,' hosted by Justin B., the discussion centers on step seven of the 12-step recovery program, featuring Kahi W., a betrayed spouse of a sexual addict. Kahi shares her personal journey of the support she found in SAL 12-step meetings since 2012, and the vital role these meetings play in her healing process. The conversation delves into humility, the importance of community support, and the continuous action required for recovery, emphasizing the significance of acknowledging both strengths and defects, and offering them to a higher power. Kahi provides practical advice and shares personal experiences highlighting the daily practice of surrender and trusting in a greater power to manage life's challenges.

Transcript

 Step 7 - Life Keeps On Life-ing w/ Kahi W

[00:00:00] Justin B: Welcome everybody to the Pathway to Recovery podcast. I'm Justin B. I'm a grateful, recovering sex addict and I am so grateful to be living in the miracle of recovery one day at a time. And today I'm excited to continue this journey that we're taking through the 12 steps of recovery with members of SAL 12 step.

[00:00:23] As you've seen in the pattern, we have the addicted share a step and then we have the betrayed share on a step and we just go in that pattern back and forth. Today we're on step seven in our pattern we're talking with a betrayed spouse of a sexual addict and I'm excited to have Kahi W here with me. Kahi, why don't you just take a minute and share who you are what, brought you to the rooms of SAL 12 step and then we'll go from there. 

[00:00:53] Kahi W: Thanks, Justin. I'm Kahi. I started attending 12 step meetings back in 2012. At that time, my husband and I had been married for about 10 years. We'd been together five years before that, and knew each other in high school. And he had disclosed that he had a pornography addiction. He used those words because of an interaction he had with a guy that he met at a self improvement class that he went to.

Over the years, I have grown very grateful that he came to me with that understanding already, that I didn't have to teach that along the way. So he came to me with that - he'd had an addiction, it had been there with him since high school, before we met. And I was obviously heartbroken and lost, and didn't know what to do.

I told one friend; I had found online that you should tell one person, someone safe, so that you're not holding it all in and I'm so thankful that I did. She knew a woman who was working with SA Lifeline at the time and she gave my friend all the resources that they had to share with me. [00:02:15] And that was how I got into SAL 12 step meetings. I've continued to go. 

In the meetings, we ask, “Why did you first come and why do you keep coming?” And I first came because I literally felt like I couldn't breathe. I felt every day the weight of what I was carrying, the fact that I had no idea about anything about addiction or betrayal, trauma, or any of that stuff was so heavy that I came because I couldn't breathe. And in the meetings, I felt like I could take a deep breath and rest that hour and a half and then I would hold my breath again for that whole week until I came back into the meeting. And I'd come back in and [say] just, “Okay, I made it another week. I'm safe. I can feel here. I can say whatever I need to say.”

[00:03:05] And I keep coming back because that is true for me still. I have worked the steps a number of times in different ways and still feel like there's so much to learn. I am an ogre. And I have layers in my onion and every year I'm like, “Oh, whoa. I thought that behavior was fine, but now I'm recognizing that it doesn't work for me anymore.” And I can see the intention behind that better than I could four years ago. So I'm so grateful for the steps and the way that they helped me become a better person. 

[00:03:41] Justin B: Oh, thank you for sharing that. And I've got a couple of questions based on what you shared, but I want to touch on this one, even though it's a further down the road type thing. But I want to get some hope out there for somebody who's feeling like you talked about there, or maybe some further insight on that.

You said you came into the meetings to breathe and then you held your breath for the weekend between meetings. Are you now able to breathe between meetings or are you still just surviving between meetings? What does that look like in your life today? 

[00:04:10] Kahi W: You know, I am far better at being able to breathe because I have more tools than I did in the beginning. I know how to surrender. I have support people that I can call. I have a sponsor who knows my history and has been with me on this journey for years and can call me out on my behavior that I sometimes can't see because of the emotions that I'm feeling. And so I am better able to breathe. 

And there are still moments where it feels really heavy. Trauma triggers are less frequent than they used to be for me. But when they hit so hard sometimes, I'm shocked at where I'm at and if I'm not careful, I can go into shame around, “You've been doing this for how many years and you still can't get yourself out of this hole?” or “Why are your emotions so big that you can't control them?” So there are moments where it does feel really heavy, but definitely less than it used to. It's much more manageable than it used to be, which I'm so grateful for. 

[00:05:13] Justin B: Yeah, thank you for sharing that and for bringing some honesty and some hope to those who right now are just feeling like the world is on them and there is no hope of breathing. So thank you for that. Next question I want to ask based on what you shared there is, you said you saw somewhere that you need to tell one person that you can trust.

What is your take on that one person thing now? Have you found more strength in, you talked about more tools? “I've got more people that I can talk to now.” What do you see as the difference between one person and a community? 

Kahi W: Oh, the community is so vital. I really feel like that one person that I was encouraged to tell and the idea of that person who came was really a blessing from God. It was His hand in my life. helping me get the tools that I would need to continue down this road. But the community for me is so vital because if I only have one person that I can call, first of all, that person's not always going to be physically available for me to talk to. Also, they might not be emotionally available either. We all have our own struggles. 

And I know as I sponsor people, there are days where I'm like, “I am not going to be the safest person for people to talk to because I'm struggling with my own stuff.” And that takes self awareness. But I also think strength, hope and experience from a variety of people who have had a variety of experiences and life, all the details of our stories are different, but they all lead to the same place. And so the difference is really helpful for me in opening my mind into thinking about things differently or being open to being wrong about a certain thing. 

I can remember, this is going to sound like a weird one, but there was a woman in a meeting once who surrendered that she was so embarrassed because she couldn't gain any weight [00:07:09] because of the trauma that she was going through. She was so thin, she couldn't gain any weight. And as a woman who was struggling with my weight, I was like, “What?” Like, “How is she surrendering this thing that I keep hoping for?” 

But it was so good for me to recognize that it's all relative. We all have our struggles and they look different and they sound different and they hit us differently. And as we surrender them, we're blessed and we can bless other people by sharing our strength, hope and experience, whatever that looks like. 

Justin B: Thanks, Kahi. And I think that thing that you said, “This is going to sound weird or strange…” I think that it is very powerful to share with people “what I'm struggling with and what I'm freezing in this trauma,” whatever it may be, in addiction on the addict’s side, it's all pointing to the same place.

And I love how you led there; our path there may look a little bit different, but the direction we are hopefully heading in is in the same direction. And I think that's what the steps of recovery are pointing us to, the end goal of step 12 is, “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all aspects of our lives.”

So our direction is pointing towards the spiritual awakening towards God and service of others. That is our direction that we're moving towards. And not just about me sitting in my own addicted isolation or in my own trauma isolation but working that connection with God and others. Any thoughts on that before we start talking more about the steps?

[00:08:36] Kahi W: Yeah. I was listening to some podcasts trying to hear what other people thought about step seven and on one of the podcasts, somebody talked about this idea that all of my darkest moments can be of service to other people. And as I share those things that I'm surrendering or the things that I'm struggling with, as I share and as I remember those things, and I'm willing to think about the process that I went through to get through them with God, they can all be a blessing to other people.

That's not why I do it, but I have certainly found that as I have been willing to walk this road with God, willing to remember the road. I think I hear people say a lot, “forgive and forget.” And that phrase doesn't work for me. Because I feel like I need to remember, I want to remember the wins and the misses that I've had along this road because they teach me what I do or don't want to do in the future. And as I share those with people, it opens the door for them to recognize that their mistakes, their missteps are also great teachers and part of the journey for all of us. 

[00:09:55] Justin B: Yeah, I love that. And that takes me to something from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that talks about the past being our, the family's greatest asset and sometimes the only asset that a family has, initially. So we may get to that here in a minute, but I want to jump into the steps and like I said at the beginning, we're covering step seven today. 

What I'm going to do is, as a refresher to anybody who may have not have listened to any of the previous steps, I'm just going to read through each of the steps up through step seven, and then we'll start our conversation specifically on step seven. So these are the 12 steps of SAL, which are based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, with just a couple of word changes. 

Step one, we admitted we're powerless over sexual addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable. Two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three, made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step five, admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step six, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

And step seven, humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Now, step seven is the shortest of these steps in terms of words in the step, “humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” But in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous it’s also the second shortest step in the book as to what information is there.

But man, how big is this step though,Kahi? “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” I don't know about you, Kahi, but I have one or two shortcomings that need to be removed. How about you? What are your thoughts on that? 

[00:11:39] Kahi W: Oh, the list. Yeah. Actually, as I was rereading this step in preparation for this, it struck me how vital it is to remember that this is step seven. You have a whole bunch of steps in the beginning. And if I do them, then I'm prepared for step seven. And each time I work step seven, I feel a little more prepared to work step seven, but I have to do all of the ones in front of it. And I've always felt like six and seven were these ethereal steps of okay, how do I become willing in step six? And then, okay, what do I need to do to humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings? 

And just all over this step I have recognized how important it is to get to a point in my life where I really am humbly asking Him to remove my defects. It goes back to a recognition that there are things that I can do in this recovery process and there are things that I can't do in this recovery process. And I heard a quote the other day, it was this idea of “I let God do the impossible and I do the possible.” And for me, step seven is a lot of knowing your role, knowing your space that you're supposed to take up in this step. And for me that is that I can learn about humility and try to make that a part of my life.

[00:13:12] I can be aware of the defects that I wrote out in step four, that I shared with someone in step five. But to be able to humbly ask Him to remove them means that I work steps one, two, and three, where I recognize that my life was unmanageable, that there is a God that can restore my sanity, and then that He can do that as I turn my will and my life over to Him. So I had to gain trust in Him first in order to be able to do any of that. Seven's huge, and I didn't realize that, how big it was, until I got into it and really thought about, “How am I going to explain what seven is to people?”  

Justin B: Yeah, no, I love that. And I think I've shared this before, possibly on this series of podcasts, but the first time I took the steps the way I remember taking steps six and seven, I had just sat down with my sponsor for a few hours at his house in his office and gone through my steps four and five and identified a whole bunch of things.

And he said, “Okay here's that list of things that you've identified. Are you willing to have God take those away from you?” And I was like, “Yep.” He goes, “Step six, check.” And then he said, “Okay, let's kneel down and pray to have those things removed. Check. Step seven is done. Now let's move into 8, 9, 10.” Now I could misremember this a little bit, but that's how I remember it.

And that is how I sponsored people for five years. Step six, seven, check, check. Let's move on and get into the meat of this stuff in eight and nine. And then I had a sponsee say at the end of working the steps, I just had a postmortem conversation with him and said, “So talk to me about changes you had.”

And he goes, you know what, step six and seven were by far the most powerful things I've ever done in my life.” And I was like, “What?” And it just changed my whole perspective on things. And it has become something that is super powerful in my life as I've analyzed that further and I've looked deeper. Okay, what character defects today are just eating my soul or just killing me? And what do I need to do to become willing to let go of avoidance and procrastination? Which are my big ones. And what do I need to do with that? 

Kahi, what is an experience you had with one of your character defects, maybe one that was killing you and you have put a lot of effort into being willing to give it up and asking God to remove it?

[00:15:37] Kahi W: Yeah. I wrote down a couple. So I'm currently, which I didn't realize this, but a few weeks ago in my home group, we talked about step three. And as we talked about step three, at the end of the meeting when we're invited to write down a commitment for the week, I wrote down that I wanted to start a surrender journal. And I wanted to write in it every morning; every morning I was going to surrender all the things that were feeling heavy to me, or that were on my mind. And so I started that journal. 

And have been able to keep up with it, which consistency is a defect of mine. Maybe not being consistent is a defect of mine. And so I'm really good at working really hard on something until it's not painful anymore and then I will often drop it and move on to something else. So the surrender journal has been a big one for me and I have been realizing over this last week, how much the surrender journal for me feels like me working step seven. I started it because of a thought I had as we were studying step three, but for me it's been really helpful in step seven. 

So just the other day my husband and I, we've been working on some new boundaries, he's been in recovery working or going to recovery meetings as long as I have, but life doesn't stop life-ing. And so as things just keep coming up, we've been working on some new boundaries. And one of the things that I've been working on is not getting in the way of God when it comes to my husband working his recovery. 

So I've made a couple of boundaries with myself. I currently do not share recovery insights with him. Because I find that sometimes I'm sharing them in a hope that he will pick that idea or principle up and it will become a part of his recovery, which is manipulative in my mind. I didn't recognize that's what I was doing as I shared sometimes. It's not all the time, but enough that I recognize that I want to distance myself from that behavior long enough that I can really see what's what. So that's been one of my boundaries that I've been working on and surrendering on a daily basis to God.

So recently we were getting ready, getting the kids out the door in the morning and we had an interaction and I said something, I don't remember what I said but I felt his energy change and then it got negative in the kitchen as we were getting kids out the door or whatever. He went upstairs to go get ready for work. And I did what I used to do. I grabbed my phone out and I started texting him. “I felt the energy change in the room when I said this. And I just wanted you to know that this is what I meant. And I hope you didn't misunderstand me,” like trying to jump in and make the situation smooth without giving him the space to do his work or not do his work. 

And so I'm writing this text and then I remembered what I had surrendered earlier in the journal that morning. And so I stopped and I said a little prayer and I just said, “Heavenly Father, should I send this text or should I just let it leave it alone?” And the answer for me was, “Leave it alone.” And so I deleted said text, I put my phone down and I walked away and just went about my morning. And later that day, he shared with me that he had negative feelings, had processed through them, had talked to his sponsor and that this was the insight that he had.

[00:19:31] And had I sent the text I would have gotten in the way of that. Now, of course he has his choice to not call his sponsor, right? He could let that feeling fester and whatever. And I've done that before too. But that is a defect that I know that I have. I have enough education about addiction and enough education about betrayal trauma, that I can be a little bit dangerous in my desire to help turns into control really quickly without meaning to.

And so that is something I'm actively asking God to remove. And again, I'm asking Him to do what I can't do. I can't remove that myself, but I can pray it out. I can write it out. I can be aware and actively working to let that go. And then He can take it from me 

Justin B: I really like that. Thank you for sharing that experience and how you walked through that. And I think I love calling these things miracles when I've already thumbed out something, a response that I think, “Hey, this is kind, this is helpful.” And then before hitting send a little thought of, “Oh, wait, is it?” And then pausing and saying, “God, is this helpful? Is this what needs to happen?” And if you get the answer, “No,” you're done. Being willing to go “Okay, I'm going to delete this whole thing that I've already thumbed out,” and it's a miracle. 

[00:21:12] Kahi W: It feels like a miracle because I'm not only willing to delete it, but then I have to also do the work to get it out of my head, to surrender all the things that I wanted to say that I think are right. Like if everyone in the world would just listen to me, everything would be fine. 

Justin B: Of course. 

Kahi W: This is the thing that I tell myself frequently and so I need to put a stopper in there. I often say that's a red flag for me. When I see a red flag, that means stop and ask for guidance and for help. But there just are so many things I do day to day that I don't recognize as an issue until I'm willing to see them. And I think that also, it takes a willing heart to say, “Okay, show me what I need to do, what I need to be working on now.

Justin B: Yeah. And I think that's part of that humbly asking Him to remove our shortcomings. Show me God what I'm missing here. Show me what blind spot is lurking there that with a little bit of light shown on it can really make a big difference. Not only in my life, but in those lives that I have stewardship with, those lives that I interact with or whatever it may be. Any other thoughts on that? 

Kahi W: So, on page 82 for anybody who's listening that wants to flip to it, this is where I, maybe not heard, but the first time that I understood the concept of humility in a way that I could actually hold it in my hand and look at it and say, “Okay, that's what humility is.”

It says, “We came to see that the foundation of step seven is humility. That is a willingness to accept ourselves as we are, and to accept God's help.” So just this humility is this willingness and ability to see ourselves as we really are, the good and the bad, all of it together, and be okay with all of that together. That until I can see it and hold it and not, I don't know, run away from it, I can't really work on it.

Because I need to be able to be okay with myself as I really am. For me, that was a really big ask because for so long I had been taught any emotion, bad emotions, you don't want to feel bad emotions. [00:23:21] So you can't be angry. You can't be sad. You can't be whatever. And so until I was able to accept that this is a part of me, that I do tend to control people. As I did step four, I was surprised to see that all of my assets were also my defects just with a little twist in them. Like I'm a very helpful person. I like to help people and that turns into control in two seconds if I'm not really careful about it. But being able to acknowledge all of those things, really for me, has been huge.

Justin B: So Kahi, I love how you took that approach of, “A lot of my assets are also my defects with a little twist.” So often when I'm working with sponsees and myself, we're just beating ourselves up in that step four process. We're saying, “I'm a piece of junk. Here's my character defect,” like crazy. I had somebody point this out to me and I've tried to do this a few times, but it's so easy for me to forget how powerful that is. That, “Hey, this character defect of controlling, what character strength, what talent or gift have you tweaked just a little bit to make it a bad defect?”

And I love how you said, “I want to be helpful.” I want people to be happy. I want to be able to serve people and help point them in a direction that's helpful, but no, I tweak it and it becomes controlling rather than that. So I love how you took that perspective 

[00:24:53] Kahi W: I feel like it was helpful for me to look at it that way as I did step four. Because it's the same on the betrayal trauma side doing stuff. I think so many people that are working the 12 steps get stuck on four because it's terrifying to think about what you will uncover. What am I going to see that I don't know what to do with as I look at step four?

It helped me to go, “Okay, what kind of assets do I have?” And I didn't like listing them out like that. That felt prideful to me. And so I asked some of my close friends, like my sisters, “What are some assets that I have? And don't laugh at me when I ask you, I'm doing an experiment. I just need you to tell me.”

And then I was able to look at it almost in the third person and say, “What's the opposite of that?” and check myself. “Is that a defect I have?” And, “Oh yes, it is a defect that I have,” but to be able to find the good and the bad kind of at the same time was helpful for me to stay in balance as I looked at my inventory. 

Because often it can feel just like this, I don't know if you've seen the movie Runaway Bride, where she's got the doll and it feels like you're just being hammered over the head with all of your weaknesses and what a terrible person I am, and all these things. And anyway, I found that to be helpful. 

[00:26:18] Justin B: Yeah. This next question always brings me a little bit of fear to ask, but I think it's really powerful here. A lot of people, no matter whether we're on the SANON side, the betrayed side, or the addict side, doing step four is scary. And many, most people get hung up there. Because we don't want to see what's really there for you. 

Kahi, when you came into the rooms, I'm assuming, and you correct me if I'm wrong on this, that you came in to try and fix your husband, to try and figure out what needs to happen there. And so taking step four may have been like, “I don't want to look at myself. I want to look at him.” Talk to me about the importance of that shift of perspective there to look inward into the future for character defects rather than to look outward at our spouse or whoever it may be that we're in these rooms for.

Kahi W: Yeah, no, I for sure fell into that category of “Oh good, I'll come to these 12 step meetings and I'll learn what I need to do to fix my husband, or to save our marriage,” or whatever, it certainly wasn't, the thought wasn't “I'm going to go to 12 step meetings so that I can figure out my defects and work on my relationship with God.” Because I thought that my relationship with God was perfect. 

So looking back, one of the things that was really helpful for me in step four. Actually, my first meeting that I attended was step four. I remember just [thinking] “What are they talking about?” But the women in the meeting were joyful and they were laughing about some of their defects. [00:27:53] “Oh yeah, I do this.” And laughing about it. 

And for me at that time, nothing was funny. I had no funniness in my life at all. And so to see these women who had similar experiences, similar pain, be able to laugh with each other as they talked about their struggles. I don't know that there was mention of their addicts at all in that meeting. That was interesting to me. I don't know what else to say except interesting. 

I was just like, “This is, I don't understand what's happening here.” But I knew in my heart, even with everything else going on, I knew that whatever they had, I wanted. I knew that they were thriving, some of them, that they were at least surviving, and I wanted and needed that.

I think the example of the women in my group really opened me up to this idea that okay, maybe there's something in here that I can learn. Over the years that has certainly, it's all about my stuff at this point, my boundaries are about me and what I need, more so now than they were a few years ago.

[00:29:12] In our blue book in step four it says something in there. I was one of those that was stuck and didn't know how to do step four, didn't want to do step four. And [there is] something about the pain that we resisted. We only made it worse by not doing step four.

And I remember reading that and going, “Okay, if I want to get rid of this pain that I'm feeling, I need to work step four.” And that was what motivated me through. I can remember at that time, the thing that was really painful for me was looking back at old family pictures from years before when I didn't know what was happening for my husband. I couldn't look at old photos because it was too painful. The holes in my story were too painful for me to go back and look at the pictures. 

And it made me sad because my kids would want to go back and look at those pictures. And I couldn't sit with them and go through with them and tell them about them because it was just, it was too painful for me. And I wanted to be able to get past that, not necessarily for myself, but for my kids so that I wasn't constantly shooing them away from those memories. And I remember going to meeting and reading that in step four and thinking, “Okay, there's a promise in here that if I work step four, I can get past that pain,” and that has worked for me. I’ve been really grateful for that. 

But yeah, step four is scary. But without it, I used this phrase a few weeks ago, until you work step four you're a baby in recovery. You're in kindergarten, preschool and that's okay. The real work and growth comes in four through nine.

And oftentimes people don't make it past that spot. So maybe just a plug for it's hard. It's painful, but it's so worth it. The gifts on the other side of that, I don't know if I would have if I didn't work. I'm sure I wouldn't actually. 

[00:31:21] Justin B: Yeah. And for me, my character defects would be in a darkened corner. I wouldn't know what they were, I wouldn't be able to identify them. Now my wife may tell me, “Hey, you're so selfish.” And I'll be like, “Whatever, look at me. I'm working.” You know, I'm doing all these things. I'm not selfish, but until I put it down on paper and see, “Holy cow, my selfishness really does affect so many areas of my life,” and then I can go, “Okay, God, here's my selfishness. Now what do I need to do, what direction do I need to go from here? Here it is. Now what? And I love that. 

I'm going to read the step seven prayer out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is found on page 76 in there and step six is the paragraph before that. And step seven is this paragraph. In fact, I'm going to read all of the information we have on step seven in the big book. 

“When ready,” and ready means are we willing to ask God to help us be willing to let go of those things. “When ready, we say something like this. ‘My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to You and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen.’ We have then completed step seven.”

There's step seven. 

[00:32:48] Kahi W: Done. 

Justin B: Done. 

Kahi W: Check. 

Justin B: So as we go through that prayer, Kahi, what are some of the things that jump out at you that make it more than maybe just that, what, six lines of print in the book? 

Kahi W: Yeah, willingness is huge. I can remember in high school, I had a moment where an incident happened that had just made me so sad and I was really struggling with letting go. So I had gone down outside and hid in my car, in my parents car to get away from everybody. And I was crying. And my mom came down and found me and she scooped me up and took me upstairs to her room and we're sitting on the bed and she's trying to get me to talk.

And I just, I couldn't verbalize what was happening for me at the time. And she didn't, to her credit, she didn't force me. She just let me be. And then she said to me, “I learned a few years ago that when I have a problem or something that I'm worried about, it's like I have it in my hand and my fist is closed. And I'm just hanging on to it, for dear life because I'm so upset or I'm so angry or whatever it might be. I'm so scared.”

And she said, “And I'm learning that I need to pry my fingers open and hold my hand out in order for God to be able to take it because He won't pry my fingers for me. He's not going to do that. So I need to open up my hand and give it over to Him.” And that is the visual that I use when I think about being willing. 

In the SAL book, it talks about giving up. And instead of this “Okay, I quit,” I give up an idea. I often think of an open hand, giving it up to God and passing it up that way and saying, “I can't, but here,” and that takes willingness. It takes an awareness that you can't after you've tried for years to do it by yourself. And to know who you're giving it to and why matters, but willingness is huge in the recovery puzzle. That's why the middle is the willing heart. And until we have that, the other pieces don't really [fit]. The idea of all of me, again, the good and the bad that, we have to know what that is in order to give it to Him. 

[00:35:10] Justin B: So can I pause you right there on that? Because this is something that has really opened my eyes here recently. When I'm saying this seventh step prayer, when I'm identifying maybe a specific part of my life to give to God, I'm saying, “I'm willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.” I don't get to decide what is good and what is bad. I'm giving it all to God. And because, and I think this is where the insight hit me is, because my desire to help other people is good. 

Kahi W: Yeah. 

Justin B: But when I'm doing it without God leading me and doing it, it becomes controlling. It becomes bad every time. So I need to say, “God, I even give my helpfulness to you.” 

Kahi W: Yes. 

Justin B: Because that can stand in the way of my usefulness to You and my fellows. Direct me how You want me to be. Any other thoughts on that good and bad thing? 

Kahi W: Yeah. I mean, I found, in my surrender journal as I've been doing it, I'm sometimes surrendering the things that I'm excited about. Like something's going well, like my husband and I had a disagreement and we were able to work through it without making a sponsor call, this is good. We're headed in the right direction.

But I find that I need to surrender that too, because then I can get into pride around, “Look at how good we're doing.” And now we don't need to work, we don't need the help and we don't need to ask God anymore. So yes, all the good and the bad, because I twist it. It's my human nature to twist it to my benefit. I think it's to my benefit so quickly without even realizing what I'm doing. Yeah, the good and the bad for sure. 

[00:37:02] Justin B: All right. Anything else in that prayer that jumps out at you? 

Kahi W: As you were reading this prayer, I was thinking about the quote that Brene Brown says about stepping into the arena. And I should probably look it up because I don't remember what it is exactly, but she talks about how it takes real courage to step into the arena unarmed.

And I feel like that's what my good and bad characteristics are. It's my armor that I have used to keep safe over the years. But as I give that all to God, give all my armor and just say, “Okay, whatever. However you think is best. That's what I'll do.” Um, in the Lego movie, have you seen the Lego movie?

Justin B: I have. It's actually one of my least favorite movies. I really don’t like it.

Kahi W: That's funny. But there's this part where they go into Emmett’s brain, who’s supposed to be the master builder. And they go into his brain and he has no plans in his head. He has no instructions for how to build something incredible with Legos. And it's this empty room. And they're like, “What, how can he be the master builder if he doesn't have anything in his head?”

But then the creator puts the idea into his head and then that's what he does. And in my mind, that's what I think about sometimes when I'm trying to just let go of all of my ideas, all of my suggestions, whatever. [00:38:28] I think of that empty white room, like nothing in my head, just empty it out and then let God put back into me what He wants me to do and be willing to do whatever that is. 

Justin B: Yeah, that last phrase, “Grant me strength as I go out from here to do Your bidding.” Now I've asked what your bidding is. Now, am I willing to do that or do I have enough strength to do it? If you've told me to do it, I trust that You will provide a way of doing the things that you've given me to do and get out there and do it. 

Do you have any experiences that come to mind where you've cleared your head, it's a white room and something's come in, you've been like, “Oh, that's bigger or different than what I thought, but okay, I'll go do it.”

Kahi W: Oh, I feel like there's so many little things. The text message that I decided not to send, that's one of those where it was like, “Okay, I have the perfect solution to this issue right here, and I'm gonna just go ahead and do it,” and then the pause and “Not that way.” 

[00:39:29] Justin B: All right. So before we go into some wrap up questions here Kahi, is there anything that you were like,  “Man. I really think this is something important we need to talk about step seven,” or your experience that we want to get to before we start wrapping up? 

Kahi W: In the SANON book on page 81 there’s a quote from the Al Anon book. And it says, “We have little choice but to accept ourselves as we are with all our limitations and chief among those limitations is the fact that we cannot cure ourselves. By accepting that God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, we begin to achieve the humility that is necessary for change to take place.”

In step seven, we put that acceptance to work. We take action. I love that I'm learning that step seven is an action step. In my head it was like six and seven or kind of these, like you just do it in your brain. But step seven is an action step. There are active things you can do, even if it's just reciting the step seven prayer every morning, or a surrender journal, or reaching out to your sponsor every day for 30 days to just surrender the things that you can't control.

[00:40:48] Whatever it is, whatever idea that comes to me as I think about being willing to do these things, I believe is what I need at the time. And if I do those things, I know that God will do His part in taking those defects from me. It doesn't happen overnight. Sadly, it takes time, I'm learning that. Like I said earlier, sometimes what I think is not a defect, a few years down the road, I realize is a defect. And I have started working steps four through nine just around one specific behavior. 

I did this a few years ago with my kids. I was a yeller for a long time. And I remember a specific incident where I saw what it was doing to my daughter and recognized, “I never want to see that face again on her. I never want to know that I caused that kind of pain for her.” And so I did a four through nine on just that yelling and knowing that it was a defect, saying it out loud, asking God to remove it, being willing to have it removed and making amends made all the difference in my relationship with her. And it solidified in me this real willingness to work on it and to find other tools besides yelling at my kids to get what our family needed at the time.

The ideas will come and sometimes they might feel a little bit weird, but I found that those are the best ones because I know they didn't come from me. I know that if the idea is, “Wait, what?” Then it didn't come from me. It came from a higher power who has my best interests and the best interests of everyone around me in His heart at the same time, which I can't do. 

[00:42:50] Justin B: That's beautiful. I'll take that back to that seventh step prayer. The purpose for this is the reason why I'm asking God to remove all of this, the good and the bad, remove every single defective character. The reason why is because it stands in the way of my usefulness to You, God, and my fellows, those around me, my family, my friends, my fellowship, my work, my whatever it may be. I need that removed so that I can be of best service to those around me.

And just a powerful concept. Thank you for sharing that about the yelling and your process through that. I'll just speak for myself on this. Once I go through a process like what you did with four through nine on the yelling, for a character defective of mine, for example, for me, avoiding some procrastination, I still have to give it up every day, one day at a time, forever, because it'll come back. Just because a weak thing has become a strength today doesn't mean it's not going to become weak again tomorrow. Any further thoughts on that? 

Kahi W: I think that's what staying humble means. It's just a willingness to say, “Yeah I did good today,” because that's seeing things as they really are, right? The good and the bad. I did a good job today on not avoiding and not procrastinating and that doesn't mean that I'm going to do a good job tomorrow because I continue to need His guidance, His help to let go of those things that come naturally to me. 

Yeah, it's a daily process. I remember, a couple of years ago, we were sitting in church and the teacher asked, we were talking about defects of character, and the teacher asked jokingly, I didn't realize he was joking until after I said what I said, but he said, “Does anybody here wanna share a defect?”

And my hand shot up and I was like, “Oh, I got one.”

“And what do you do to overcome it?”

And I raised my hand and I shared, “I have a defect of controlling. That's something that I do. I want to help but I twist it pretty quickly. And so my defect is controlling. And one of the phrases that I use to remind myself to show up differently is “Let go and let God.”

And he was so uncomfortable with my listing my defect that he started to say, “I don't really think, I don't really know if that's a defect…” He tried to step it back a little bit.

[00:45:02] And my husband raised a hand and he said, “Just so you know, she's totally fine. She doesn't need anybody to fix it or make her feel better. She's fine with her defects because she's working on them.”

And I feel like that's important for all of us to be able to say, “This is something I struggle with. I know that about myself. And this is what I'm doing to overcome it.”

Justin B: I love that, that we who are really working our recovery can go into a place like church and say something that just blows the whole thing up, but it brings other people to go, “Oh wait, she struggles with that too. Oh wait. Yeah. Yeah.” And then it opens up conversation, I love that.

All right. So the way we wrap up these episodes each time is I ask the guest a couple of questions. What words of advice, what words of experience do you have for the newcomer who is just now willing to come into the rooms or just maybe have the bomb dropped on them and they don't know where to go? What words of experience and advice do you have for that person? 

And then the next part of that is: What words of experience and advice do you have to somebody who's been here since 2013, who may be going, “You know what? I think I've got everything I need here,”? What are your thoughts on both of those?

[00:46:18] Kahi W: Such a good thing to think about. To the person who might've just had a disclosure or might've even just had their third disclosure or whatever that looks like. I would want to tell her or him, “You're not alone.” There are people who understand the thing that you might not even understand at this point. And there is so much hope and help and healing to be had, but it takes time. 

And so be gentle with yourself and recognize that this is a journey. It's not going to be over in a week. But the tools will come as you put yourself out there to find them. And I hope that 12 step meetings are one of the tools that you find helpful. But there are a lot of tools out there, so keep looking and find your people, find your circle where you can share whatever it is you need to share and know that it's okay. 

I'm going to share one story about knowing that SAL 12 step meetings were my people. Early on in recovery, again, like I said, I just was like, “Okay, I can breathe in meetings.” And I don't remember what step we were studying, but we were sitting in the group and we were talking about grief and mourning and I said this phrase that I would have never said anywhere else. It just came out of me.

[00:47:57] I said, “Sometimes I wish that instead of this trial, I wish that my husband had died because if he died, then people would be coming to my house and they would be giving me meals and letting me cry and even understanding why I'm crying. They would be helping me. But with this, I feel like I am mourning and grieving all the loss, but looking like I'm fine on the outside.”

And I said it thinking, “That's a terrible thing to say. You wished your husband died,” and the women in the room all nodded their heads and they were like, “Yep, I understand that.” And I thought, “Okay, I'm not crazy. It's a real feeling. I'm not a bad person.”

And it's not that I really wanted my husband to die, but what I was saying was, “I'm hurting here and nobody knows because of the nature of the addiction and the nature of betrayal trauma.” And so anyways, find your people that help you feel peace and serenity instead of fear and anger, because there's plenty of that out there as well.

[00:49:16] Justin B: How about to the old timer? 

Kahi W: To the old timer. In SAL meetings, I would say that I'm one of the older timers out there. And I would say, “Keep coming.” I keep coming, because I recognize what we talked about earlier - that I can be doing really well and then I'm not, and I find myself flat on my back. “Just what the heck just happened here?”

Life keeps life-ing, boundaries need to be changed and reworked. Every day is a surrender day is what I like to say to my kids. And just, life just keeps happening. These steps remind me that I'm not the greatest power in the universe. There is someone out there that is the greatest power in the universe and the weight that takes off my shoulders is huge when I'm in a good place. So I keep going back because I want to stay there. 

[00:50:22] Justin B: Thank you so much, Kahi. And I love that phrase. Life keeps life-ing. Life doesn't stop life-ing. This is good stuff... 

Kahi W: It does not.

Justin B: When I have a good day, I always think the rest of my life is going to be like this. But yeah, life keeps life-ing.

Kahi W: It does. 

Justin B: I love that. 

Kahi W: Yeah. 

Justin B: Thank you so much, Kahi. This was such a meaningful conversation for me and opened my eyes to a lot of things. I hope it was meaningful for you also. 

Kahi W: It was. Thank you. 

Justin B: Awesome. Alright, let's close this out with what we do often in the SAL meetings. Keep coming back, everybody. It works when I work it. So work it. You are worth it.